Diversified applications are emerging to meet different application requirements of users. The applications may include instant messaging applications, multimedia applications, reader applications, photographing applications, payment applications, and so on. After the applications are installed in an intelligent terminal (such as a smartphone or a Pad), a user of the intelligent terminal can use the applications to listen to music, watch movies, read a book, and so on, thereby enriching and facilitating user amateur life.
Currently, some applications in the intelligent terminal are usually encrypted to prevent theft of privacy information and property of the user of the intelligent terminal, and only when an encryption authentication passes, the encrypted application can be operated. To encrypt an application in the related art, the user generally needs to click an icon on a home interface of an intelligent terminal first to enter a setup interface, and then selects a security service option of the setup interface to enter a security management interface, and then selects an application encryption option of the security management interface to enter an application encryption interface. The user can then select one or more applications to be encrypted through the application encryption interface. Obviously, the above encryption manner is complicated and time-consuming.